PseudoPod 752: It Rises From Between My Bones

[Bdoomed]

PseudoPod 752: It Rises From Between My Bones

Author: Donna J. W. Munro
Narrator: Sandra Espinoza
Host: Karen Bovenmyer
Audio Producer: Marty Perrett

PseudoPod 752: It Rises From Between My Bones is a PseudoPod original.


Content Warning:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cancer, Chemotherapy

Sitting on the toilet for the first sleepy morning pee, I felt my ovaries twist as a little piece of me trying burst through in a micro-explosion of tissue, born into my desert of a womb.

It made no sense.

I sat staring at my bald head and face in the mirror hanging across from the toilet. If I weren’t the one making my features screw up in twisting confusion it would have been hilarious. Chemo makes your face strange. No hair. Not one brow or lash. It’s like looking at one of those big-eyed aliens that the tabloids are forever finding, autopsying, and giving breathless reports about probes and pregnancies. I looked just like that only not so green and way more dumbfounded.

How could my ovaries be spitting out an egg? I’d been in a chemically induced menopause since this whole mess started. Since I’d found that little lump in the same place they’d found Mom’s so many years ago.

My whirlwind started in the office of the doe-eyed technician running the ultra-sound. She’d murmured in positive little half notes until her hand froze. She stopped and pulled the wand out of my armpit, glooped on more warmed gel that honestly felt like it had been harvested from inside a body cavity instead of the little bottle warmer next to her keyboard.

Then she said, “Oh.”


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[Álex Souza]

This story gave me mixed feelings. As it should.

It’s that kind of horror that you don’t know if it’s scary or sad. Or maybe it’s sad how it happens to that character, but it’s scary how it could happen to you or someone you know.

I like how it does transitions smoothly, without resorting to scene breaks. There isn’t a single one in the whole story. I should learn from that.

That thing that the MC pulls out of her really exists. It’s called a teratoma and it could have not only eyes, but nails and teeth as well. I googled and found about an Indian woman who live with one in her head for more than twenty years.

The ending felt like deus ex machina to me, for I didn’t see any setups for it. Announcing "cancer" and "chemoterapy" as trigger warnings is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I didn’t quite get the ending. Spontaneous human combustion?

[Scuba Man]

The narration was excellent; however, I had to nope out of this one. Ah well...